


Rearrangements

by msmorland



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-28 22:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17191547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msmorland/pseuds/msmorland
Summary: “Darling,” Eames murmurs. “Come home with me for Christmas.”The hum of Eames’s voice in Arthur’s ear—the trail of his lips on Arthur’s ear—feels so good Arthur doesn’t process the actual words, at first.Then they penetrate his brain and Arthur sits bolt upright.





	Rearrangements

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kate_the_reader](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate_the_reader/gifts).



> A small Secret Saito gift for kate_the_reader. The prompt was “paper” (not much paper actually appears in this fic, but the word gave me the dorm-room visual that prompted most of the story). I hope you enjoy!

“Darling,” Eames murmurs. “Come home with me for Christmas.”

The hum of Eames’s voice in Arthur’s ear—the trail of his lips _on_ Arthur’s ear—feels so good Arthur doesn’t process the actual words, at first.

Then they penetrate his brain and Arthur sits bolt upright.

“Eames.”

“For winter celebrations, then,” Eames says. He knows Hanukkah already happened—or he should, considering how much he teased Arthur for the ridiculous menorah pajama pants his mother sent him, and the way he looked at Arthur when Arthur put them on, and how delighted he seemed to take them off him.

But no—that isn’t the point here. Arthur isn’t going to get sidetracked. The point is that Eames just invited Arthur home with him for Christmas.

The point is that this is not their arrangement.

They don’t do holidays together. They never even do meals in the dining hall together. They aren’t a couple. It’s senior year, and all of this will be over in just one more semester.

It’s senior year, and all they’re doing is getting three-plus years of sexual tension out of their systems.

“Eames,” Arthur says again—and there must be something in his tone, because Eames’s smile visibly dims. He suddenly looks more like the Eames Arthur remembers from freshman year, the one who, if he looked at Arthur, was just as likely to be smirking as smiling.

Eames sits up and turns away, swinging his legs off the side of Arthur’s bed.

“It’s fine, Arthur,” Eames says, standing up, beginning to pull on his clothes, which he always scatters everywhere. “I know that’s not what we do.”

Eames grabs the literature paper he was proofreading last night from the top of Arthur’s dresser-slash-nightstand. He stuffs the pages into his messenger bag.

And then—and then Eames leaves.

* * *

Arthur doesn’t see or talk to Eames for three days.

Only then does he realize how unusual it is _not_ to see or talk to Eames for three days. They’d been clear about keeping things casual—but Arthur can’t remember the last time they actually went more than a day or two without at least texting each other, and usually they ended up together in Arthur’s room, in Arthur’s bed.

Arthur thinks about texting Eames now, but he doesn’t. Usually, Eames is the one who texts first— _thinking of u, darling ;)_ —and Arthur knows how to reply: _With your other brain, I presume, Mr. Eames?_ And then he barely needs to ask before Eames is at his door (it’s almost always his door—and once or twice, memorably, the library stacks).

Finally, on day three of no Eames, Ariadne corners Arthur as he’s making a sandwich in the dining hall. He’s been grabbing lunch to go for the last three days, eating in his room. Easier to get work done that way.

“What’s going on, Arthur?” she says. “You’ve been ignoring all my texts, I haven’t seen you around, and I know you don’t have that many exams. You can’t be that busy.”

Arthur mutters something about his thesis and takes a hasty bite of his sandwich, but Ariadne isn’t fooled. And she’s mightier and more devious than her tiny size suggests, so when she hooks her arm through Arthur’s and tugs him toward a table, he knows better than to resist.

“Okay, Arthur,” she says, before he even has a chance to take another bite of his lunch. “Spill.”

Ariadne is one of the few people who knows about him and Eames, so all Arthur has to say for her to understand the situation is one sentence: “Eames asked me to go home with him for Christmas.”

“And you said?”

“Ariadne, come on. Eames and I aren’t...like that.”

When Arthur finally meets her eyes, Ariadne is frowning fiercely at him.

“What?” Arthur says. “You know Eames. You know me. We’ve spent the last three-and-a-half years arguing.”

Though, now that he thinks about it, he can’t remember the last time they did more than bicker—and, Arthur, at least, finds the end result of that bickering rather enjoyable. It’s been a while since he meant any argument with Eames seriously.

“Okay. Up.”

Ariadne stands up and claps her hands at Arthur until he stands, too, abandoning his unfinished sandwich on the tray-return conveyor belt. Then she loops her arm through his again and tows him back across campus to his dorm.

Once inside, she sweeps her arm around his room.

“Look around, Arthur,” she says.

At first, Arthur has no idea what she’s talking about. Then he sees it: Eames, everywhere.

One of Eames’s horrendously patterned shirts hangs on the handle of Arthur’s closet door. Eames’s sneakers and gym bag sit next to Arthur’s, left here after they ran into each other working out last week.

(“I know another way we could work out, don’t you think, darling?”

“Do lines like that usually work for you, Eames?” But of course they did work on Arthur, every time.)

And then there are the papers: An earlier draft of Eames’s lit paper, pages strewn across Arthur’s desk along with a few of Eames’s ever-present pen caps. A half-finished problem set that, when Arthur turns over the page, has a sketch of Arthur in a suit and tie on the back.

Arthur remembers that day, when he came back from a bad job interview and forgot all about it as soon as Eames looked at him, his eyes somehow both darker and lighter than normal as he took in Arthur in his best suit. Eames had indicated with the twirl of a finger that he wanted Arthur to turn around, and Arthur had obliged, and then they’d happily obliged each other in other ways as well. (And even Arthur’s mental innuendos, he realizes, have started to sound like Eames.)

But it’s the look in Eames’s eyes that Arthur pictures now. Not the memory he expected to return to from that day—but Arthur has the suspicion, suddenly, that he’s been paying attention to the wrong things.

He turns to Ariadne, who’s leaning against the wall, watching him.

“I’m an idiot,” he tells her.

“Oh, absolutely,” she agrees, and they make faces at each other until Arthur realizes—

“Eames. I have to tell him—” What, exactly? That Arthur only just now figured out they’ve been _in a relationship_ this entire time? That Arthur’s stupidly continued to think of Eames as he was even while falling for Eames as he is now? That Arthur would very much like to go home with Eames for Christmas, or at any other time?

All of the above, probably.

Arthur knows Eames isn’t leaving campus for a few days yet—they’re still in the middle of finals—but this can’t wait. He needs to tell Eames _right now_.

He leaves his room at a run. 

* * *

Arthur’s only been to Eames’s room a handful of times, back when they first started hanging out. It’s a fraction of how often Eames has been to Arthur’s. But Arthur remembers where Eames lives, and he’s knocking on Eames’s door before he’s had a chance to think through the words he wants to use, to plan out exactly what he wants to say.

Arthur’s a planner, normally. But then, he’s never found it hard to talk to Eames. Another clue Arthur should have seen much, much earlier.

“It’s open,” Eames calls, and Arthur realizes that, yes, the door is propped open and there’s music on inside.

The last time Arthur was here, back in October, it looked like a normal dorm room: bed, desk, dresser, wardrobe, all arranged in more-or-less normal places. Now, the furniture is pushed back against the walls and Eames’s easel and art supplies are in the center of the room. Paintings in various stages of completion—Eames’s thesis work, Arthur assumes—are propped up everywhere. Of course: Where everyone else has a dorm room, Eames has an artistic wonderland.

“Eames,” Arthur says. Eames rears back, startled, and a glob of paint flies off his brush and lands on Arthur’s (formerly pristine) shirt.

“I deserved that,” Arthur says, and he _thinks_ , going by the twitch of Eames’s mouth, that Eames is trying not to laugh. That has to be a good sign. 

And then Arthur says the thing he’s been trying to avoid saying to Eames since their very first freshman-year debate: “I was wrong.”

Eames blinks. “You...were?”

Arthur can practically see Eames’s confusion, the way he’s trying to figure out whether to respond with a lewd comment, or a sarcastic one, or something else altogether.

It’s past time, Arthur thinks, that he stop trying to keep them to the rules Arthur set—rules that no longer apply.

Arthur says: “Is that invitation still open?”

Eames blinks again. And then he smiles.


End file.
